Campaigning against the government's distressing war on disabled benefit claimants. All posts represent the opinions of their respective authors and not WtB as a whole.

Monday, 30 November 2015

The ridiculous idea that being able to afford food is bad for you

Reading anything written by Brendan O'Neill is a bit like getting a private part of your anatomy caught in industrial machinery: Fun if you're a masochist; excruciating if you're not.

On Friday he wanked out this piece, because he was sad that George Osborne didn't do enough to take food from the mouths of the working poor in the autumn statement. Someone posted the link in a disabled people's group over the weekend with the added comment "know your enemy". So I foolishly clicked.

I do agree with him that it's "weird and wrong that the state effectively tops up people’s pay packets." When I was young and healthy and working 2 jobs, it seemed a little odd that I needed Working Tax Credits to make ends meet. I got £112 every 4 weeks, which may not sound like much to some people. But when you're broke, it's vital. It would be great if WTCs weren't needed; but you don't cut them and hope that employers will boost wages when their employees start collapsing from malnutrition-related illnesses. Employers need to be compelled by law to pay a living wage; and then WTCs will just fizzle out when no-one is eligible for them because the minimum wage is sufficient.

But Working Tax Credits aren't the only benefit O'Neill wants to abolish. After a whine about how over 50% of households receive more in benefits than they pay in tax (because employers pay so little that people are both eligible for in work benefits and not reaching the income tax threshold? Too obvious?); he turned his ire on people who are too ill to work.

The fact that vast numbers of people, first through Incapacity Benefit and then through Employment Support Allowance, have been redefined by the state as ‘incapable’ — of work, of independence, of dignity, in effect — and have been put out to pasture.

For starters; it's just unoriginal. Jeremy Hunt already accused people needing state help of being undignified at the Tory party conference.

Secondly: Why is 'incapable' in quote marks like it's not a real thing? Incapable of working does exactly what it says on the tin.

But as for independence and dignity: IB/ESA allow for those things; they don't strip them away. Without an income; people too ill to work would be entirely dependent on the charity of others. Having an income allows you the independence of buying the food you like, not being dependent on what a charity received in donations that week. Having an income means you can be independent in placing your own online supermarket order if you can't shop for yourself; not being dependent on someone shopping for you. Having an income means you can buy clothes that you can fasten yourself with only the use of one arm while you're recovering from a stroke; not being dependent on someone else to dress you.

On the contrary; having that independence stripped away and being forced into begging for every little thing: That's undignified in a developed country where we can, actually, allow for people recovering from serious accidents to have a bit of independence.

Also Mr Research-Challenged doesn't know that ESA awards are time limited, despite the fact that the "support group" is for people unlikely to ever be well enough to work again. Everyone - even with the most severe and incurable conditions - gets reassessed every few years; no matter how much iller it makes them. No beautiful green pastures of fairness left in this country; just wasting taxpayers' money on continuous reassessment of people with incurable conditions.

There are parts of Britain where a state-sanctioned culture of incapacity has deadened community spirit, destroyed its soul.

I shouldn't laugh at this level of ignorance; but it's actually pretty damn funny. "Culture of incapacity" like progressive neurological conditions are the latest must-have fashion statements.

Yes; sure I don't participate in community events as much as healthy people might. Although that's partly because in real life I'm actually quite shy and I don't want to get involved in neighbourhood politics because I don't want to be getting into arguments with the people who live all around me. You don't shit where you eat. Or get into arguments with people you have to pass in the street every day.

But also I don't get involved with "community spirit" because I'm ill a fuckload of the time. If the tenants and residents association is organising a day trip to Brighton and seats on the coach are limited: I don't want to book a place because I'll probably be ill on the day and I'll have robbed someone that could have gone of the chance.

Am I being a soul-destroyer? As someone who's simply never bothered going to the local street festival I've probably destroyed less souls than someone who regularly writes transphobic screeds for financial gain.

He then just goes into the realm of surreal with his next paragraph. I can only imagine he was tripping his balls off when he wrote it and I'm slightly picturing him looking like my cat when she's off her tits on nip. Yes, I am picturing him complete with toy mouse.

First he claims that welfare "dents individual ambition".

You know what dented my ambition? Illness. It broke my heart when I had to give up doing what I loved and claim benefits because I was just too ill to do it any longer. I still regularly cry about what I've lost. But you know what I haven't lost yet? My life. Because I still have a very low income that's just enough to survive on.

In the second half of the paragraph he reckons that people claiming things from the state are "less likely to rely on their own volition and on the support and kindness of neighbours and friends." This is really the balls-tripping bit.

I would challenge you to find many people more capable of relying on their own volition than me. When I broke my shoulder last Christmas it took me all of about 2 minutes to work out how to put my hair into a ponytail despite not being able to lift my arm at all. I'd wager most non-disabled people couldn't figure it out at all.

If O'Neill broke his neck tomorrow; would he be comfortable with all his assistance for the rest of his life being provided by friends and neighbours?

I didn't think so either.

Yet a few miles from the leafy suburbs in which they churn out their defences of welfarism there will be communities branded incapable and made divided by that welfarism.

All us incapables live in segregated communities!

Which is news to me. I thought some of my neighbours were doing quite well for themselves.

Although, the sad reality is that there are poorer areas with a higher number of disabled people than the national average. But that's because disabled people are more likely to live in poverty, so we're not going to be buying mansions in Hampstead. Instead we're going to be renting in affordable areas.

And poverty is more likely to make you disabled. From the psychological toll of living hand to mouth, to getting osteoporosis from not being able to afford foods high enough in vitamin D, to being more likely to sustain an industrial accident in your low-paid job leaving you unable to work.

Although Trippy McBalls has just, inadvertently, made an impassioned defence for income equality and fighting against housing benefit cuts that are causing social cleansing from affluent areas: Social integration is good for communities.

In the second-to-last paragraph, Mr Haven't-Thought-This-Through says we need to cut welfare to "repair the self-belief and independence of working-class and poorer sections of society."

He suddenly gives a fuck about my self-belief? Throughout the article he has called me:

* Undignified
* A Deadener of community spirit
* A destroyer of souls
* Lacking in ambition
* Unable to rely on my own volition
* Lacking in "individual pluck"
* Lacking in "community zest"

Basically, just about every pejorative he could think of. That's not how self-belief works. You can't insult someone for several hundred words and not expect their confidence to take a hit.

But, Mr O'Neill truly saved his most bizarre brain ejaculation for last. He implores for more benefit cuts because our system is "Dickensian". That's right; at a time when people are so broke because of the cuts already that Victorian diseases are soaring, he wants to cut more claiming it'll make things less Dickensian.

If I wasn't familiar with his other writings; I'd think this was a brilliant piece of comedy. But sadly I know that he wasn't trying to be funny.

4 comments:

The only decent thing O' Neil has ever written are his critiques of Nudge/libertarian paternalism. But then what's to like about libertarian paternalism? His unqualified shitty libertarian paternalist styled commentaries on poverty and disability (oh yes, the fucking irony) for example, make me want to twat him one hard enough to have him try drag himself a mile in my shoes. Twat. Wanker. Hypocrit, and writer of conflicted dual directional horseshit, opposer of same sex marriage, no redeeming features.